hello patio,
I got it working, thanks to your help.
1. the broadcom driver was the one needed, not the realtek. I did not even see the setup file for the broadcom because it was at the bottom and after I realized that I needed to scroll down the page I saw it there (in my younger day I would have zeroed right in on it, old age). that immediately fixed the exclamation point in device manager.
2. there is a setting in the bios that, frankly, I find ridiculous (my opinion) 'boot from onboard LAN' that is DISABLED by default. that setting needed to be enabled. I don't know why anyone would want that disabled. I never would.
if you didn't get me looking at the cd, I would not have been looking in the right area.
I hope this is permanently fixed. my wife will be using this computer at her work. it's long overdue.
thanks again!
